Islam Takes on the West

Bernard Lewis, “the West’s greatest scholar of Islam”, recently delivered an important lecture on “Europe and Islam”. It would be worthwhile for you to read the entire lecture. In it, Lewis notes that:

two [religions] have claimed that their truths are not only universal--all religions claim that--but also exclusive; that they . . . are the fortunate recipients of God's final message to humanity, which it is their duty . . . to bring to the rest of humanity, removing whatever obstacles there may be on the way. This self-perception, shared between Christendom and Islam, led to the long struggle that has been going on for more than fourteen centuries . . .

Lewis maintains the struggle continues today, because Islam remains determined to prevail. The Muslims, Lewis posits:

have certain clear advantages. They have fervor and conviction, which in most Western countries are either weak or lacking. They are self-assured of the rightness of their cause, whereas we spend most of our time in self-denigration and self-abasement. They have loyalty and discipline, and perhaps most important of all, they have demography, the combination of natural increase and migration producing major population changes, which could lead within the foreseeable future to significant majorities in at least some European cities or even countries.

But we also have some advantages, the most important of which are knowledge and freedom. The appeal of genuine modern knowledge in a society which, in the more distant past, had a long record of scientific and scholarly achievement is obvious. They are keenly and painfully aware of their relative backwardness and welcome the opportunity to rectify it. Less obvious but also powerful is the appeal of freedom. In the . . . Islamic world . . .the idea of freedom in its Western interpretation is making headway. It is becoming more and more understood, more and more appreciated and more and more desired. It is perhaps in the long run our best hope, perhaps even our only hope, of surviving this developing struggle.